Book reviews and other bookish news

First Lines Fridays | March 1

First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?

Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page

Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first

Finally… reveal the book

The stranger came out of the sea like a water ghost, barefoot and wearing the scars of his journey. He walked as if drunk through the haze of mist that clung like spider silk to Seiiki.

The stories of old said water ghosts were doomed to live in silence. That their tongues had shriveled, along with their skin, and that all that dressed their bones was seaweed. That they would lurk in shadows, waiting to drag the unwary to the heart of the Abyss.

I don’t care how many times I see it, I’m still in love with that cover. It is absolutely gorgeous. My preordered copy of Priory arrived on release day and I may or may not have let out a little excited squeal when I opened the box. The book that got me back into reading, after years of maybe picking up three or four books a year, was The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon. I’ve become a fan of hers for life and am looking forward to reading this first book outside of her Bone Season series. Granted, this thing is enormous and I’ll have to gear myself up to tackle the over 800 pages but tackle it I shall.

A world divided.A queendom without an heir.An ancient enemy awakens.

The House of Berethnet has ruled Inys for a thousand years. Still unwed, Queen Sabran the Ninth must conceive a daughter to protect her realm from destruction—but assassins are getting closer to her door.

Ead Duryan is an outsider at court. Though she has risen to the position of lady-in-waiting, she is loyal to a hidden society of mages. Ead keeps a watchful eye on Sabran, secretly protecting her with forbidden magic.

Across the dark sea, Tané has trained all her life to be a dragonrider, but is forced to make a choice that could see her life unravel.

Meanwhile, the divided East and West refuse to parley, and forces of chaos are rising from their sleep. (from Goodreads)